Ousmane Sembène did not go to film school as a young man. He fought in the Second World War, worked on the docks of Marseille and taught himself to write. By the 1950s he was a published novelist. Then, in his forties, he decided that books could not reach most Africans, many of whom could not read, and turned to film. His movies, starting in the 1960s, told African stories from an African point of view. He became known as the father of African cinema.
Early life and novels
Sembène was born on 1 January 1923 in Ziguinchor, in the Casamance region of Senegal. He left school early and worked as a fisherman, mechanic and labourer. During the Second World War, he served in the French colonial army. After the war he moved to France and worked as a dock worker in Marseille, where he became involved in trade unions and politics.
His novels included God’s Bits of Wood, about a railway strike in French West Africa, which became a classic of African literature. He studied filmmaking in Moscow in the early 1960s, believing cinema could reach a wider African audience.
Borom Sarret to Moolaadé
His short film Borom Sarret (1963), about a cart driver in Dakar, is often cited as one of the first films made by a sub-Saharan African. Black Girl (1966), about a Senegalese woman working as a maid for a French family, is considered a landmark feature of African cinema. Xala (1975) satirised the new African elite after independence.
His last film, Moolaadé (2004), about women resisting female genital cutting, won an award at the Cannes Film Festival. Sembène made several films in Wolof and other African languages, rejecting the dominance of French.
FESPACO and Thiaroye
He was closely associated with FESPACO and the growth of African cinema. Ousmane Sembène died in 2007 in Dakar. His 1988 film Camp de Thiaroye depicted the massacre of West African soldiers by French forces at a camp near Dakar in 1944, a subject that had long been suppressed. Sembène often described himself as a griot, a traditional storyteller, using cinema to carry stories to the people.
Ousmane Sembène turned to film because he wanted to reach people who could not read his novels. Film schools across the world now study the movies he made for them.
